Excessive alcohol drinking drove about 488 deaths per day during the pandemic, CDC says

A woman charged with hitting and killing a WSSC Water employee while he was working in Montgomery County, Maryland, had a blood alcohol content more than twice the legal limit and officers found a half-empty bottle of alcohol in her front passenger seat, police say. Bianca Jones, 19, was one of six foreign tourists who died in a suspected mass methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng, a popular backpacker destination in northern Laos. It also urges people to be wary of homemade brews, and free drinks or drinks priced far below normal. It often helps to have a nonalcoholic drink in your hand at social events, so the offer to have a drink doesn’t even come up, said biological psychologist Aaron White, senior scientific adviser to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. For health and safety, Jernigan said the goal for state and local government agencies should be encouraging almost everyone to drink less. That’s the highest rate recorded in at least 40 years, said the study’s lead author, Merianne Spencer.

For example, research shows that raising taxes on alcohol can bring down consumption, according to both Esser and Siegel. By Buddy TBuddy T is a writer and founding member of the Online Al-Anon Outreach Committee with decades of experience writing about alcoholism. Because he is a member of a support group that stresses the importance of anonymity at the public level, he does not use his photograph or his real name on this website. During end-stage alcoholism, a person may struggle with involuntary rapid eye movement (nystagmus) or weakness and paralysis of the eye muscles due to thiamin (vitamin B1) deficiency.

1. The data showed that the deaths fully attributable to alcohol have risen in the past decade, Esser added.
2. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, alcohol-related deaths total around 3 million each year globally.
3. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
4. Adam Sherk reports institutional support from the Canadian Cancer Society and Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
5. Effective treatment options for substance use disorders exist, but treatment coverage remains incredibly low.
6. Alcohol use is a known risk factor for mortality, and the rates of alcohol-induced deaths have risen over the past several years (1).

tourists died in Laos after apparently drinking methanol. What is it and why was it in drinks?

People under 21, the legal age limit to drink alcohol in the U.S., have a higher risk of dying from binge drinking or other risky behaviors. This includes driving under the influence, injuries, sexual assault, or violence. Thousands of people under 21 die from alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. each year. For women, binge drinking is defined as consuming four or more drinks in the span of 2 hours.

A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) highlights that 2.6 million deaths per year were attributable to alcohol consumption, accounting for 4.7% of all deaths, and 0.6 million deaths to psychoactive drug use. Notably, 2 million of alcohol and 0.4 million of drug-attributable deaths were among men. While several factors led to this dramatic increase, “the main one was most likely the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University. A combination of stress, tremendous loss of life due to the virus and isolation from friends and family contributed to mental health struggles that compelled many people to self-medicate with alcohol, Siegel said.

Over 3 million annual deaths due to alcohol and drug use, majority among men

Some people may also have delayed getting help from a doctor or hospital due to their fear of catching Covid. Past studies have found that people bought more alcohol, particularly hard liquor and wine, during the early part of the pandemic. Binge drinking among adults between the ages of 35 of 50 in 2022 was higher than any other year during the past decade, other research has found. Effective treatment options for substance use disorders exist, but treatment coverage remains incredibly low. The proportion of people in contact with substance use treatment services ranged from less than 1% to no more than 35% in 2019, in countries providing this data.

Rates of current drinking were highest among 15–19-year-olds in the European region (45.9%) followed by the Americas (43.9%). Questions or messages granada house boston regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to Research has shown that long-term alcohol misuse can have a lasting impact on the brain, although some areas may recover with abstinence. The most serious effect is Korsakoff’s syndrome, characterized in part by an inability to remember recent events or to learn new information. According to the CDC, more than one million people die yearly of cirrhosis, including over 40,000 people in the United States.

«To build a healthier, more equitable society, we must urgently commit to bold actions that reduce the negative health and social consequences of alcohol consumption and make treatment for substance use disorders accessible and affordable.» The average annual number of deaths from excessive alcohol use among males increased by 25,244 (26.8%), from 94,362 deaths during 2016–2017 to 119,606 during 2020–2021 (Table 2). Age-standardized death rates among males increased from 54.8 per 100,000 population during 2016–2017 to 55.9 during 2018–2019, and to 66.9 during 2020–2021.

The liver breaks down alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic substance that scars and inflames the liver. This chemical also interferes with the liver’s ability to break down and metabolize fats. This causes that fat to accumulate and may lead to fatty liver — an early stage of alcohol-related liver disease. Treating the alcohol use disorder, along with the health problems caused by chronic, heavy drinking, may be possible. The first step will likely be a medically supervised detox, which will help rid your body of toxins and manage the symptoms of withdrawal. While there’s no official diagnosis for end-stage alcoholism, your doctor will be able to diagnose you with an alcohol use disorder and be able to identify your stage based on the severity and amount of time you’ve been misusing alcohol as well as your current health.

Methanol poisoning can cause headaches, dizziness and decreased consciousness including coma, seizure, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision and multiple other symptoms, according to the U.S. The CDC recommends seeking medical attention immediately if methanol poisoning is suspected. According to the Methanol Institute, the global trade association for the industry, drinking just 25 to 90 ml (0.7 to 3.0 ounces) of methanol can be fatal without proper medical treatment, but can be successfully treated if caught early. A tool on the CDC website can help individuals evaluate their drinking and then come up with a plan to make healthier alcohol choices. The CDC also estimates that 1 in 6 adults binge drink — defined as consuming four or more drinks on an occasion for a woman or five or more drinks on an occasion for a man — with a quarter of those doing so at least weekly. «Alcohol is often overlooked» as a public health problem, said Marissa Esser, who leads the CDC’s alcohol program.

Backpacker town at the center of the suspected mass poisoning

The report highlights the urgent need to accelerate actions globally towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)  target 3.5 by 2030 by reducing alcohol and drug consumption and improving access to quality treatment for substance use disorders. The rise of home delivery services for alcohol enabled people to avoid stepping outside and possibly getting sick, but also further isolated them, Siegel said. Other policy changes, like permitting alcohol to be carried in to-go cups, posed “a risk factor for excessive alcohol use,” Esser said. If drinking alcohol is taking a toll on your mental health, let your doctor know or talk to a licensed mental health specialist such as a counselor or therapist.

The average number of sex-specific alcohol-attributable deaths increased among all age groups from 2016–2017 to 2020–2021(Figure). The alcohol-attributable death estimates in this study may be conservative because they are based on deaths due to alcohol-related conditions that were identified as the underlying cause of death only; contributing causes of death were not included. Direct AAFs were used to estimate alcohol-attributable deaths due to acute causes (eg, injuries)6; however, the sources of some AAFs were based on older data that may less accurately represent current alcohol-attribution. Last, some conditions related to alcohol use (eg, HIV/AIDS) were not included because suitable AAFs for the US were not available. Researchers from the CDC and Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research captured 58 total causes of death related directly or indirectly to excessive alcohol use. Drinking excessively can lead to deaths directly related to alcohol, such as alcoholic liver disease, alcohol poisoning, suicide by excessive alcohol use, crashes and falls, and fetal alcohol syndrome, among others.